


Cyhiraeth's Screams

by SunflowerSupreme



Category: Doctor Strange (2016), Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Character Death, Gen, Mirror Universe, Scene Re-Write, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-18
Updated: 2016-11-18
Packaged: 2018-08-31 17:54:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,107
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8588152
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SunflowerSupreme/pseuds/SunflowerSupreme
Summary: Her cuts were not all so clean, and some did not die on impact. Even if they have betrayed her, she cannot leave them to bleed out, alone in the Mirror Universe.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This takes place after the Ancient One fights Kaecilius and his Zealots. Several of them didn't seem to fall far enough for them to die immediately, so I wanted to explore the possibility that she would realize this and turn back to assist them.
> 
> There are a few strange names thrown in, but they are all explained down at the bottom.

So long as their heart was still beating, they are were her student and she could not just leave them. 

The Ancient One had very nearly left the Mirror Dimension without a glance back over her shoulder, not wishing to remain behind at the scene of the massacre any longer than was needed. But the sound of a soft gasp caught her attention, and she paused, turning back to stare at the bodies on the ground. One Kaecilius’ Zealots was still alive.

Returning the way that she had come was harder than expected, walking between the bodies of her former students only served to remind the teacher of where they had all come from. They were fighters, each one of them, constantly struggling against their own personal demons in an attempt to learn to master the Mystic Arts. They were survivors, up until the moment they challenged her and she threw them off a building. 

She told herself it was necessary, but a biting voice in the back of her head reminds her that it wasn’t just to protect them or her other students from the dangers of the ritual, but to protect her own secrets.

Periodically she knelt, pressing her fingers against a throat to feel for a pulse, searching for the one who was still breathing. Most of them, so far as she can tell, died on impact, but others it seemed were not so lucky. But she couldn’t find them. The Sorcerer Supreme let out a frustrated huff, wondering for a moment (and maybe hoping) that she had imagined the sound of breathing. But then she heard her name.

“A-Ancient One?”

She moved even more quickly, rushing toward the sound and dropping to her knees beside its source, one of the younger of the students that she had lost to Kaecilius. She rested one hand on the young woman’s forehead, bringing the other to press into the injury to her abdomen. “Morana?” she murmured.

The girl's eyes fluttered open weakly staring up at her teacher. For a moment there was nothing on her face but pain and confusion, and the Ancient One’s stomach twisted uncomfortably. But quickly anger overcomes the confusion, and the pain twists into hate. “Y-you lied,” Morana rasped. 

The Celt did not quickly come up with a responce to that, keeping her hand pressed into the wound to stem the blood flow out of instinct. Finally she replied, “Only ever for your own good.”

“You p-promised to save us.”

“I promised only to shelter you, and to guide you in a better path, to give you a purpose in this world. What more could you want?” As soon as the words slipped from her mouth she regretted them, this was not the time for an Socratic debate, this was the time to calm her injured student, assess her injuries, and decide what is to be done with her.

Morana’s reaction was immediate, eyes flashing as she snarled, “You promised us knowledge, and yet you keep the best for yourself.” She started to cough, the bout of energy she had gotten from her anger not enough to over come her injuries. Blood flecked her lips and the Ancient One gasped, pulling a handkerchief from her pocket and pressing it to her lips. 

“Stay still,” she instructed, ripping away Morana’s tunic to examine the damage done to her abdomen. Instinct drove her moments, her habit of caring for her students as though they were her own family. The wounds were severe, but nothing that could not hypothetically be treated with time and paitence, and for a moment the Sorceress forgot what had caused them, overcome with a swell of relief that not everyone had to die.

But then Morana spoke again, and her words were a painful and sudden reminder of what had started everything. “You made a deal with the creature you claim to protect us form.”

Morana knew about Dormammu.  She had, in her haze of worry, forgotten that even blood-flecked lips could spill secrets. “I did,” she confessed after a moment. “But only ever to protect this world. He is not what you think he is, Morana. His eternal life brings nothing but pain and torment.” The Ancient One’s voice was void of emotion, and she slowly pulled her hand from the Zealot’s body, taking a deep breath to steady herself.

There was a moment of silence between them, Morana staring up at her with obvious hurt in her eyes. “Hypocrite,” she gasped, struggling to push herself up. The Ancient One didn’t move to stop her, knowing that any damage she did to herself would be meaningless shortly. She knew what she would have to do. “You have done nothing but lie and and lie and lie!” 

The Sorceress looked down at her hands, at the blood soaking into her yellow robes. “Only ever for the greater good.” She told herself that, constantly, to remind herself that it was not entirely for selfish reasons that she visited the Dread Lord. Morana spit more blood, gasping suddenly as though her lungs were filling with blood. The Ancient One had not even thought to check her for internal injuries, but it didn’t matter anymore. 

“Lay down,” she instructed, pressing her hand into the Zealot's chest and pushing her back to the ground. “You have internal injuries.” 

Morana allowed herself to be pushed back, even as blood leaked from her mouth, her face as filled with nothing but hate. “What are you going to do now, Ancient One?”

“I could leave you here,” she replied. “You wouldn’t last long enough even for Master Kaecilius to consider returning.” 

“You wouldn’t.” There was true fear in Morana’s eyes as she spoke now, the prospect of being left to die enough to overcome even her hatred. 

“I wouldn’t,” the Ancient One agreed, a blade forming in her hand that still rested on the young girl’s chest and sliding into the Zealot's heart. She died almost instantly, but the small gasp of surprise would haunt the Sorceress' nightmares for the rest of her short life.

The Ancient One stood, shivering with something akin to horror at what she had done. The girl had been on death's door, she reasoned, there was no way to be certain that she would have lived, even with help. But that does not diminish the knowledge that she had (at least in part) been protecting her secrets. 

“May Labraid watch over you," she said, turning and striding away, leaving the bodies on the ground in the mirror dimension and vowing not to return to that street if she does not have to.

**Author's Note:**

> Morana is not a specific character, I just needed a name for the Ancient One to use. It comes from the Slavic Goddess of death and winter and I picked it because symbolism and also drama. YOLO.
> 
> Cyhiraeth is a Celtic Deity whose scream foretells death, and the Ancient One is noted to be Celtic, hence the title of the fic.
> 
> Labraid is the (Irish) Celtic god of the underworld.
> 
> The Dread Lord is another name for Dormammu, and I included that here because I can't remember if it was in the movie or not.


End file.
